In late 2001, the Eclectic Guy began to
compile this index of those albums in his record collection that he had
(purposefully) overlooked for many years. Here are some low (and high)
watermarks from an era of lower fidelity, endangered species of a vanishing
medium.

Tyrannosaurus Rex. some lore from
the books of Agadinnar or A BEARD OF STARS. Dedicated to the Priests
of Peace, all Shepherds and Horse Lords and my Imperial Lore Liege—the
King of the Rumbling Spires. Right. Circa 1970. I dug this
gem out of my collection when Guitar World magazine declared the
solo in “Elemental Child” one of the hundred
worst in rock history. From the intro, with the aimless electric guitar
playing
and the irritating finger cymbals, you get the sinking feeling that you’re
stuck in somebody’s vision. Evoking images of Pan,
Marc Bolan’s
vibrato sounds like the braying of a sick goat. “Fist heart mighty
dawn dart” is thought-provoking, provoking thoughts such as “is
one of my speakers shorting out or are they twiddling the ‘pan’ knob
on the guitar for a mythic effect, while Tony Visconti looks on, horrified?” Here’s
a songwriter who is funny but humorless, and capitalizes “Peace,“ “Truth,” and “Dworn,” which,
as a footnote helpfully clarifies, is machinery of war with the horns
of a gazelle, but which I suspect is actually a stoned misspelling of “drown.” As
in: "Hey, Mickey Finn, put down that hookah and your Moroccan clay
drums, and learn to play an instrument, Bolan’s drowning." This
record is an embarrassment, but, as usual, the laugh’s on me, because
I own it.

Carole King. Tapestry. 1971. I bought my boss's record collection and this came with it. I paid him
too much, but he was my boss, and he had an original “Pictures
of Matchstick Men” 45. Every song on this album is one you already
know intimately but thought was by somebody else. It's the most breathtakingly
competent, sincere songwriting you've ever heard. You might not be ready
to enjoy it: you'll have to drop so much of your ballast of angst, irony,
and kitch that you'll feel uncomfortably weightless. This is music WITHOUT
AN ANGLE. There is nothing two-sided or clever here. It seems to predate
everything but is relevant, female but androgenous,
white but grey, professional but believable. It might be dangerous for
someone born after 1970 to listen to this, because you
can't sneer at it, categorize it, or sub-categorize it. It's neither
so bad it's good nor so good it's bad. Neither obscure nor overplayed,
slick nor ragged. It's
not selling out, nor
is
it weird just to be weird, or even weird. It's... honest. Just avoid
it.
It might
do
permanent
damage
to your knowing cynicism. You might get in touch with your feelings,
and that can be a disgustingly squishy experience.

Spooked. Robyn Hitchcock. 2004. Once
again Robyn Hitchcock is releasing a vinyl version of a CD with a different
selection, as he did with Storefront Hitchcock, Moss Elixir/Mossy
Liquor,
and the rerelase of the Soft Boys' Underwater Moonlight, all
of which were great. But you know what, Robyn Hitchcock? For once I have
no idea how to get my
hands
on your weird new vinyl release and I don't mind, because you
fell off a cliff when Jonathan Demme left your life and I heard the CD
and if you can't get it together to make a heartbreaking record with
Gillian Welsh then, frankly, I'm disappointed, and doubt the vinyl has
anything to offer me. Well okay I'll order it anyway. You still the man.
You know what: never mind.

This is Our Music. Ornette
Coleman Quartet. This is a high fidelity recording. Atlantic uses
a specially constructed 8-channel Ampex (300-8R) tape recorder for
its recording
sessions. Individual microphone equalization is not permitted. The
sound created by musicians and singers is reproduced as faithfully
as possible, and special care is taken to preserve the frequency
range as well as the dynamic range of each performance. Too bad I
listened to the whole fucking record at 45 RPM and didn't even notice.
Dude this jazz is out but not that out.

Sesame Street
sings the Alphabet. 1971. All the turbulence and dreams of
the 1960s find voice in this triumphant masterpiece of aural art.
Remember
when you first heard Ernie sing "I dont want to live on the
moon"? Well this is the Sesame Street ensembles Sgt. Pepper,
before Ernie and Bert were fighting so badly that they couldnt
be in the studio at the same time, and all their duets were overdubbed. C
is for Cookie, the original. The young Cookie Monster,
on fire, before he made his Vegas comeback with the awful Sesame Street
Fever and died of a pastry overdose in a bathroom stall in one of
muppet rocks most embarrassing catastrophes. Four Furry Friends is
a heart-drenching drinking anthem for blue furry ambiguously sexual mammals.
Sammy the Snake is the sexiest thing since old blue eyes. And "Z-The Zizzy Zoomers" (as performed by the Anything People)
is a whiz-bang ending. Literally: there is a whiz and a bang in this track.
The CD is fraudulent, beginning with a forgettable Elmo number not on
the original vinyl. Elmo is the Sammy Davis Junior to Grovers Lennon,
in my opinion.

Dead City Radio. William S. Burroughs.
1990. It would appear that perhaps half of these tracks are William
S. Burroughs performing his work, and the other half mumbled outtakes
and impromptu readings of the Bible. Curiously, Sonic Youth puts
in an appearance for a brief instrumental interlude. On the whole, the
raunchy and ecstatic mumblings of William S. Burroughs set against odd
arrangements that call to mind old-time radio theater is the right collision
of beat prose and studio polish. If I ever get married, I'll have Hal
Willner arrange the music for the reception.

Sonic Youth. 4 tunna brix. 1989.
Four knowing covers of songs by the Fall as performed by Sonic Youth.
It seems that Sonic Youth are not skilled enough instrumentalists
to be
able to play sufficiently few notes to reproduce the Falls sub-minimal
arrangements accurately. And to replicate the chalkboard-scraping dissonance
of "My New House," it may be necessary to tune ones guitar.
And nobody can enunciate like Mark E. Smith. These New York art punk
superstars wish they could sound like they had suffered Manchester. The
only thing authentic about this record is that it is probably about as
hard to find a copy of as the
original
Fall records. Sounds like it took less
time to record than it does to listen to. This record is silly. I bought
it.

Camper van Beethoven. Tusk. 2002.
Okay, remember the awful breakup of Camper van Beethoven? Jonathan Segel
had already left and there were crazy rumors that the master tapes
of
the new album had been stolen from a vault (professional alternative
music thieves?). Camper van Beethioven broke up and then there were
no records anymore, only
CDs. Well,
my
CD copy of their second album (Camper van Beethoven II & III)
skips worse than my vinyl copy. The early CVB is intensely special music
that could only have happened by accident. So what is this Tusk?
Let me see if I have this right: the 2CD set Tusk (2002) was
apparently recorded in 1987 during rehearsals for their third album
(Camper van
Beethoven).
It is a cover of a Fleetwood Mac album. They never finished recording
it, the
tapes were lost and/or destroyed, "finally discovered in the storeroom
of Greg's parents' shop," and this release was painstakingly reconstructed
with computers. Weird. Weird enough to buy, maybe even weird enough
to
listen to. One problem: RELEASE THIS ALBUM ON VINYL. The albums they
recorded at this time were released on vinyl. This is not headphone
music: the
only advantage to a CD is the inclusion of a quicktime movie of a rehearsal
of "Z.Z. Top Goes to Egypt," (a bonus track arguably cooler
than the album itself for purists - I mean in order for Camper van
Beethoven
to do what they did, they needed to be having a good time, and Tusk
is self-flagellation). HEY CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN AND PITCH-A-TENT YOU
NEED TO CUT THIS ONE ON VINYL. Eugene Chadborne does not play on this.
I was
never able to get into Fleetwood Mac. Neither were Camper van Beethoven,
apparently.

Skeleton Crew. Learn to Talk.
1983/84. Goddamn, but this is good. Spastic, haunting, virtuosic,
bellicose, churlish, kinetic, sometimes beautiful, sometimes outright
unlistenable (their Sousa cover, for example). Fred Frith and Tom Cora
are the dynamic duo of commercially infeasible art punk. The Eurythmics,
Van Halen, and even David Bowie need to step down: this is the
music of 1984.

Fripp, Robert. The League of
Gentlemen. 1981. Sounds like a good
idea: surviving members of XTC, Shriekback, Gang of Four, Robyn Hitchcock
and the Egyptians, King Crimson, Fripp and Eno, whatever band Johnny Toobad
was in, and throw in Danielle Dax on Hamsprachtmuzic, whatever that is.
Sounds like Philip Glass on speed, machinelike but played manually. Highly
repetitive music spliced together with talking and what sounds like a
woman climaxing (are we to take it that two of these amazing musicians
are having sex? which ones?!). A great idea for a record, all that's missing
is some writing. A tempo change? And maybe some cover art.

King Crimson. Lizard. 1970. This
gets the Eclectic Guy's vote for most lavish King Crimson record, though
the competition is, anyone will admit, fierce. Listen to this record wearing
robes. The CD has egregiously compromised cover art, but this music is
the sort of rock that actually sounds better without crackling. Not just
another violin band.

Slack. Bigger Than Breakfast.
1987. This record has a lot to offera great band playing tight
speedfunk, Bruce Fowler on the bone, a bright orange and green record
coverbut still not quite enough. Like a sterile, disciplined Tar
Babies. Is this what John Lennon called "plastic soul"? But "Brain Toast"
makes me long for that Oregon inertia.

Hüsker Dü. Zen Arcade. 1983.
For some reason, umlaut bands all sound alike to me. This punkpop is fast
and ragged but is still ultimately unexpressive: canned angst. The last
song is thirteen minutes long. It is energetic but vague. There are lots
of long hums: a conscious tribute to Metal Machine Music? "The
Tooth Fairy and the Princess"... Wow, for a second I thought I was backward,
then I realized it was the song. But nobody's backward pop music tops
Camper van Beethoven's.

Rascal Reporters. Riding on a Bummer.
1984. Any record that has Fred Frith playing on one of its songs
can't be more than 9/10ths bad. Another thing I was able to learn about
this
record without having to listen to it is that there are two songwriters,
and each of them wrote one side of the record. Now that's something
you can't do on a CD. Even if you could, the CD is much smaller and
easier
to flip over so it's not the same. For the Eclectic Guy, the litmus test
of a record like this is whether the songs (a "song" is a piece of
music with lyrics) are good. The few instances of singing here are
unintelligible,
and the lyric sheet (printed with fading gold ink on maroon paper) is
illegible: these guys apparently have something to hide from their
former
English teachers. The works of Kretzmer are chaotic with dense and muddy
arrangements and pretentious titles. The works of Gore are cheesily
majestic,
but with a sense of humor ("does anybody have a brain?") and the sort
of weirdness that has integrity. The attempts to be lyrical and serious
are kind of painful, and the straightfaced use of casio keyboards doesn't
help. The sixteen-minute track will have you tapping your foot & glancing
at your watch. If, in the unlikely event that you've heard all the
records
of Henry Cow and this has left you wanting more, you might consider a
quest to the used record stores of Detroit to find a barely-scratched
copy of this pressing from the almost-certainly defunct Hebbardesque
Records. And lest you think I am accusing these guys of being too indulgent,
note
that, according to the liner notes, this was originally intended to be
a double-album. Less of too much is more. UPDATE 2005 November: “It's
alive!”

Snakefinger's History of the Blues.
This record failed to make an impression on me for a long time, and, certainly,
for those of us who love Snakefinger, this music is scandalously conventional.
Rather than bring his reptilian sensibility to these numbers, the late
Mr. Lithman and his orchestra actually deliver surprisingly faithful covers
of these already-familiar tunes, making the overall listening exerience
not much different from that of an ordinary blues compilation. But, as
Snakefinger produced (to my knowledge) only five albums before his untimely
and tragic demise, let's not be picky. Worship him.

Death of Samantha. Where the women
wear the glory and the men wear the pants. 1988. Please excuse
my sincerity when I tell you that this record rocks. The vocalist has
an unbelievably sinister and rabidly articulate delivery (bet you didn't
know "fire" was a three syllable word) and the guitarist has at least
a record's worth of tricks. The rest of the band can keep a beat. The
songs are good and the production is thoughtful, with understated horn
and string arrangements, including a weird French horn solo dropped into
the middle of a song as if by accident . The song about Sylvia Plath is
weird but touching, and the extended tantrum "Lucky Dog (Lost my Pride)"
is dazzlingly cynical. What happened in Cleveland in 1988 that could have
inspired this overlooked masterpiece of independent rock? And where is
John Petkovic now? And has he calmed down? Buy this record somehow.

Soft Machine. Peel sessions.How
British is it. This music suffers from some of the excesses of 70's art
rock, such as unrestrained use of saxophone. Still, as I listen to these
people spin elaborately long-winded songs about obscure topics, I can
only think that these are my people. The introduction is pretty amazing;
it stands alongside King Crimson's "Lament" as one of the only pieces
of Meta-Art-Rock I know of. It's a song about the Peel Sessions, and the
trials and tribulations of writing songs that are too long for rock audiences
to pay attenti

The Kinks. The Village Green Preservation
Society.I never understood why so many cool Chicago record collector
guys are into the Kinks. Sounding more like oldies than classic rock,
this is a collection of psychedelic music whose vision is that of an uninteresting
England. It sounds a little bit like Rubber Soul. Go figure, maybe its
the tambourine, I'm sure these guys weren't trying to sound like the Beatles
off drugs.

The Kinks. Something Else Again.This album leans closer toward emulating the Who than it does the
Beatles and this helps it. Some good acidic treatment of the instruments
gives this potentially limp music a certain punch. I am especially fond
of "Harry Rag." What is that song about, anyway? Tin Soldier Man, is
a political number, or at least cute. But by the time "Afternoon Tea"
comes along,
I start to get this weird craving for... any other music by any other
band.

Davis, Miles. Bitches Brew. 1969.
Moody jazz, very low key and mellow. Kind of smoky. I'm not sure I
get it. In fact, I'm not sure I get jazz. But listen to this record because
it has wild cover art.

The Higsons. Attack of the Cannibal
Zombie Businessmen. 1987. Good music to vacuum to. Uninteresting
pop numbers. But listen to this record because there is a Robyn
Hitchcock
song called "Listening to the Higsons" which is cooler than this whole
LP, and has the line "gotta let this hen out," which is a mishearing
of one of the lines on this record.

Lonely Trailer. Test. 1988.What is there to say about this out of print record by this defunct
Urbana power trio..? Nice bright harmonies.

Material. One Down. 1982. Techno
pop with a great cast of sidemen, including Fred Frith on guitar and Whitey
Houston on vocals (one song each). The cover, which depicts a one dollar
bill with holes shaped like a map of the continental USA, seems to be
making some kind of statement about how people living in the United States
tend to use American currency. At the time it was released, this music
must have sounded really interesting, in a slick and repetitive and by
now very familiar way.

The Nazz. Best of Nazz.
1960s (obviously). Competent psychedelic rock from, I presume, the
late 1960s, though no date appears on the record. In the music I hear
echoes of a lot of songs by other bands that probably came later: plagiarism
by anticipation? Todd Rundgren is, in the end, as always, totally boring. "Meridian
Leeward," the vapid song about the porcine aviator, is a real low point
for me. "Under the Ice" carries the record though: somebody get the
drummer a towel.

REM. Life's Rich Pageant. 1986.
"Swan Swan Hummingbird" is easily my favorite song by REM, indeed the
only REM song I like. Though "Superman" is charming in an empty kind
of way.

Renaldo and the Loaf. Arabic Yodeling.
1983. Ralph Record's commercially defiant experimental pop duo Renaldo
and the Loaf is not for everyone. The comparison with the Residents in
unavoidable (especially the squeaky, abrasive vocals), the difference
at first glance being that Renaldo has a more diverse instrumentation
(using instruments other than synthesizers), but doesn't offer any context
for the music, whearas most of the records of the Residents might be described
as concept albums, as misguided as those concepts can be. The Loaf has
a funny name, they have weird song titles, but the music is not especially
funny or intricate. Most of it is one 4:4 rhythm. What makes the music
strange is its simplicity. The middle of side 1 has some surprising moments"Dichotomy
Rag"but the rest is mostly appropriate for parties: when the party
has gone on too long and you wish that people would leave, play this record
very loud and rant about how brilliant it is.

Scratch Acid. Berserker. 1986.
Loud abrasive unintelligible punk with an artsy album cover from Austin.
Moody, indulgent, sexist, and violent. Cool throughout except for one
little detail: the music.

Spiegel, Laurie. The Expanding Universe.
1980. Pretentious, repetitive, minimalist pure synthesizer music.
Philip Glass joins the Residents. I could see this as background music
in a documentary about ants or shopping.

Sun Ra. The Heliocentric Worlds of
Sun Ra. 1966. by Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra. This vague meandering
jazz is pretty cosmic. Interestingly, according to the album cover, the
music was recorded in 1965 and composed and arranged in 1966. That might
explain the chaotic feeling, as the band may have had trouble getting
those unwritten changes right. That shows that cat Sun Ra's unconventional
working process though. What's with the Esperanto on the back cover?

Walsh, Joe. You Bought it -- You Name
It. 1983. If the Eagles had a good songwriter in their band, it
was probably Joe Walsh. A bunch of well-fed studio musicians funk their
way through often silly songs; I.L.B.T.s is a pure puerile number for
you simple, sexist guys out there. I favored "The Worry Song" but, in
the end, I could only stand to listen this record once. Life is short.

II. Led Zeppelin (sic).Oh,
1960's where have you gone? Before Haircut 100, UB40, and U2 there were
bands content to name themselves after mere Roman numerals, and proofreading
their album covers would have required too long a period of sobriety
(unless
the zeppelin in question was not made of lead but was being led somewhere,
but let me roll up another one to ponder this heavy heavy question).
II seems
to
have
been
fairly
adept at playing other people's blues licks, but clearly they were destined
for obscurity. (NOTE: After writing this I discovered that this same
silly
album title had been used by another band whose name was even more esoteric
than "II": a series of symbols that makes the glyph formerly known as
Prince seem pronounceable.)